Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

rendezvous with Guy. She had wasted enough of her life fretting about Patrick. It was time for her to start enjoying life, while she was still young enough.

CHAPTER 7
     
    K eith had barely started his breakfast when the doorbell rang three times in quick succession. It didn’t sound like the postman. ‘Someone’s impatient,’ he thought, surprised to have a caller so early in the morning. The bell rang again. Faintly uneasy, he wondered if Jenny had come home unexpectedly, without her key. But his next door neighbour was on the doorstep.
    ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Dave demanded, his large square face flushed with fury.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Your bloody car’s blocking my garage and I’m going to be late. Move it, will you? Right now.’
    Keith shook his head in bewilderment.
    ‘She’s not back till tomorrow.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Jenny’s gone to see her sister in Luton and she won’t be back till-’

     
    Dave’s face turned a shade darker. He inched forward. Keith took an involuntary step back so that his infuriated neighbour stood poised with one foot on the threshold.
    ‘I’m not interested in your wife. What’s she got to do with it? I’m talking about your car, parked right across my garage door and –’
    Keith shook his head again.
    ‘But Jenny’s taken the car and she isn’t back till tomorrow.’
    ‘I’m talking about the Mercedes.’
    ‘What Mercedes?’ Keith frowned. ‘I haven’t got a Mercedes, it’s a Vauxhall.’
    He gave a rueful smile.
    ‘I wish it was a Mercedes.’

     
    Dave took a pace back to stand squarely on the step outside.
    ‘Well, some selfish bugger’s gone and left a dark green Mercedes right outside your lock up and it’s blocking my garage. I need to get my car out, I’m due in Bedford at nine and if I don’t get off soon, I’m going to be late.’
    ‘Well, it’s not mine and I don’t know whose it could be.’
    ‘I’ll have to call and tell them I can’t make it for nine,’ Dave grumbled. ‘But you’d better do something about getting that Merc moved. It can’t stay there.’
    ‘Not sure what I can do.’
    ‘Call the police. Report it. Or get onto a garage, I don’t care. Just get it moved.’

     
    Disgruntled by the encounter, Keith returned to his breakfast. What the hell did Dave expect him to do about some wretched Mercedes? It wasn’t his responsibility. But as he munched cold toast and sipped lukewarm coffee, he had to agree that his neighbour had a point. If Jenny couldn’t get the car in the garage they’d have a problem parking. They paid a fortune to use that garage. By the time he finished his breakfast, he was as outraged as Dave. He went storming round the back to see what was going on. He hoped the Mercedes would have gone, but rounding the corner into the narrow access lane he saw it, gleaming dark green, positioned right across the front of his garage, its boot jutting out past Dave’s garage door.
    ‘Bugger!’
    He felt his heart begin to race.
    ‘Selfish bloody bastard.’

     
    No one with a scrap of decency or common sense would park like that, blocking access to someone else’s garage. Such stupidity suggested the car had been stolen and abandoned there, in a quiet corner off the main road. Joyriders. Kids, most likely. All the same, Keith hesitated about calling the police straight away. They might want to talk to him and it was already quarter to eight. If he hung around much longer he would be late for work. It was a smart car and there was a chance the owner had been too drunk to drive home and had left it there for the night intending to return for it during the day, in which case the problem would simply go away. He decided to give it a day, and get onto the police if the Mercedes was still there that evening when he returned from work.

     
    After a difficult day at work, Keith was in no mood for any more aggravation, but the dark green Mercedes was still parked right outside his garage when he arrived home, gleaming in the moonlight. Although he couldn’t have said why, he had an uneasy sensation something was wrong. Frowning, he approached the vehicle for a closer look. He couldn’t see anything through the tinted side windows. Moving to the front he peered through the windscreen. It looked as though a man was sitting slumped in the driver’s seat. Keith ran round and tapped sharply with his knuckles on the driver’s window.
    ‘Oi! Wake up!’

     
    Stepping back, he noticed